"...a whole slew of Pinterest Projects..."

November was a flurry of activity. Suddenly December is upon me and my little boy is one year old. I can't believe it.

Pinterest came in handy for his birthday party. Oh boy, did it ever! I started Bran's first birthday board months and months ago. What started out as a sock monkey theme somehow evolved into a circus theme. The entire birthday party was a whole slew of Pinterest Projects and this is what it looked like in the end...

We did a hot dog bar with tons of toppings.

• The animal cutouts came from Hostess With the Mostess - absolutely adorable! 

• The vintage-looking popcorn bags came from Hey Yo-Yo on etsy. 

• The blue and white striped paper straws came from Amazon, watch the price, though, it fluctuates.

• I made the balloon bunting as shown on Design Mom with the help of some lung power from PB and his dad.

Goodies.

• The red harlequin cupcake papers also came from Hey Yo-Yo - Super-fast shipping, by the way.

• The cupcakes are chocolate and topped with funnel cake. I attempted little funnel cakes as seen on Bake It in a Cake, but my batter fell apart the second it hit the hot oil so I stuck the crumbles on the cupcakes all artsy and whatnot. 

• The little elephants belonged to my grandmother.

The Smash Cake.

• The smash cake was inspired by TomKat Studio. My printer was on the fritz so I didn't print her bunting, and had to make my own, but the idea is there.

• The cake itself was baked in a large Rotel can. I used the rainbow cake shown on Little Hero Capes as inspiration.

It was a huge hit!

• I made Branflake's bib using fabric purchased from liveabroad on ebay. 

We also did a photo booth.

• Some of the props were free-handed by yours truly, others were printed from Catch My Party. The old photo look is just an effect on photobucket.

• I adored this sign to direct our guests to the photo booth, but it's one of those "Uploaded by User" links that never lead you to anything so, thanks to The Graphics Fairy and google, I found a hand, lips, and mustache and was able to make my own and will share it here for anyone else that wants it.

Pinterest Project

This super-cheap project was created in an afternoon between making kabobs and chasing Branflake.

"Eat" Curtain

There really is nothing to this project it you can draw at least a little bit. 

I used some burlap leftover from my Laundry sign knock-off. It was a little wrinkly because I just threw it into my scrap bin without folding it up nice and neat. An iron corrected that quickly enough.

My sewing machine is still on the fritz and I don't have the patience to deal with it right now so I opted to hot glue my bottom seam and curtain rod pocket. I didn't bother with side seams.

Then I just free-handed the lettering, spoon, and fork with a sharpie. I didn't press down hard; just used gentle strokes until I'd accomplished the look I was going for.

Super easy. Super Cheap.

Pinterest Project

This one is easy-peasy.

Burlap Laundry Sign

I didn't have freezer paper and I'd be damned if I was going to make a run to the Wal*Mart with the baby in tow, deal with the idiots that I inevitably run into whilst shopping, and then have to stand in a ridiculous line while the only register out of fifty slowly rings up the line of people ahead of me. All for freezer paper. Nope. Not I.

So I pulled out my trusty LocTite spray adhesive and applied a coat to an 8 1/2 X 11 inch piece of printer paper, laid it on my burlap, and cut the fabric down to size.

I opened up Word and because I'm a terrible copy cat and didn't have the patience to look up my own definition of "laundry" I copied Maryann's definition and found a font that I liked (Poor Richard). Once I got everything sized up the way I wanted I hit "Print" on our HP Photosmart e-All-in-One Printer - D110a.

Paper Jam.

So I started fiddling with the printer settings and changed them so the printer thought it would be printing on photo paper instead of regular printer paper (did I say "printer" enough?). I hit "print."

We're in business. And it looks great.

I took the glass and matte out of an old picture frame and laid the whole thing on the matte to see how it would look.  The color of the backing paper was just a fluke (I'd pulled the paper from my scrap pile in case this was a disaster), and I happened to like it so I kept it, but it would have easily peeled off without any mess if I hadn't liked it.

I glued the edges down on top of the matte. The matte didn't have the depth for the nail head pins so I cut the points off with wire cutters, leaving just the nail head and hot glued them to the corners. I then made a couple of flowers by cutting circles of scrap burlap, stacking them and embellishing with buttons before also hot gluing them to the piece. Put it all back into the frame, sans the glass, and that's it.

I turned my Word document into a jpg so I could share it here:

This was a fun, easy project and I'll probably be doing some more burlap printing in the future.

Pinterest Project

Every so often I'm going to take a stab at copying a project I found on Pinterest. I'll link to the original and show off my own, along with any notes or observations regarding my experience with the project.

Today's project:

Ruler Growth Chart: Pottery Barn Knock-off

My board is a bit darker than the "original" knock-off. It instantly soaked up the walnut stain and there was not much to wipe off. If I had the chance to do this over I would have gotten the board damp first so it wouldn't have soaked up the stain so rapidly and would have been easier to wipe off.

I sanded and rounded the edges and corners. The board is a cheap wood and it chipped in a few places, but that just added to the aged appearance.

The wood took to a Sharpie just fine and I had no problem with bleeding. I tested it on the back of the board first, just to be sure.

Like MJ over at 517 Creations, I adjusted the placement of the numbers so I could hang it six inches off the floor. Because I chose to put it in a high-traffic area, PB screwed it directly into a stud as a permanent fixture we'll use to document Branflake's growth each year.

When I first showed it to PB, he was convinced that I'd purchased it for a small fortune and couldn't believe it when I said that I'd made it. Yes, honey, I am that good.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the project and how it turned out. It was a lot of fun to craft and now it's even more fun to show off.

::EDIT:: I shared this on Young House Love's Pinterest Challenge.

"...just want to be able to enjoy the sunshine."

I really hate that I feel like I have to go into stealth mode to go into my own back yard, but it hasn't rained in a few days and my garden needed to be watered. After peeking out the back windows several times I concluded that nobody was home behind us and went outside with Sawyer while Branflake was napping.

In all honesty, I've been avoiding our back-door neighbors. Not only the neighbors with the future serial killer son, but our elderly neighbor and her middle-aged daughter that also live behind us. 

It's not that I don't like them. They're nice people, but I cannot relate to a woman who is fifteen years my senior, stuck in the 80s, mooches off of her recently widowed mother, and is dating a man the same age as my father.

They don't seem to have anything better to do with their time than watch whatever I'm doing throughout the day. I feel like I'm being watched all the time. No matter what time of day I let Sawyer out, they will also let their dog out within five minutes. Whenever I go out I always wind up in a conversation about a fight the daughter is having with her boyfriend, how depressed the mother is about the death of her husband (please note I am not an unsympathetic person, I realize that it's difficult to lose a loved one, but I am also not a grief counselor and barely know these people),  how much the daughter wishes she could have children, issues with one of her other daughters keeping her grandchildren away from her, and other personal, family business. It's awkward.

If I'm not getting an earful about personal problems, I'm getting unsolicited parenting advice or being treated like a child myself. Example: One day I commented that I wanted to go into the woods and clip some flowering dogwood branches. The mother gasped in horror and said that she "refused" to "allow" me to go into the woods because of snakes. I went anyway and didn't see a single snake.

Even P.B. has to borrow my Leave-Me-The-Fuck-Alone headphones à la Natalie Portman in Garden State to mow the lawn.

If I bring Branflake out they beg me to bring him over to visit and they will kiss him and call themselves "aunt" and "grandma." Sorry, but Branflake has two aunts and two grandmas already. I don't think he needs to be confused by people referring to themselves with family titles when we've only known each other for a few months. In my opinion family titles should be reserved for family and friends that are so close we consider them family.

I'm not against a block party on occasion, but I don't want to get into anyone's business and I don't want anyone in mine. Maybe I'm this way because Central Floridians in general are not friendly people (blame all the tourists), but sometimes I don't feel like talking or visiting and just want to be able to enjoy the sunshine.

Happiness is a stick and a bed of sun-warmed clover.

I saw Chili and Cornbread in a Jar on Pinterest recently and decided to try it last night.

Because we're so close to closing we're on a tight budget just to make sure we can put every penny we can into savings. To keep it cheap I used canned chili and boxed cornbread so the meal for the two of us cost less than four dollars.

Taste-wise, the meal was as good as we could expect for canned chili and 33-cent cornbread. However, as cute as it looked, serving it in jars just wasn't practical. With a normal-length spoon it was just hard to get to. P.B. said he felt like a monkey being teased with a banana. We ended up dumping our jars into bowls (and making more dishes for me to wash).

 Perhaps with a longer spoon?